The Global COVID-19 Health Pandemic and its Implications for the African Economies
Date
2021
Authors
Ngugi, Rose
Ndung’u, Njuguna
Shimeles, Abebe
Asante, Augustine
Thorbecke, Erik
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AERC
Abstract
The current Covid-19 pandemic is damaging business ecosystems, affecting livelihoods, and threatening to reverse sub-Saharan Africa’s development progress and growth projections. It has once again exposed the fragility of many of the institutions across the continent. The pandemic has compromised Africa’s state of public finance significantly: Firstly, in most African economies it has wiped the fiscal space leading to unprecedented contraction of tax revenues. Secondly, it has placed extreme stress on public spending as governments struggle to respond to the health crisis, including increased funding for: the health sector, social and business relief, as well as measures to reduce and combat the spread of the disease. Yet, as the virus was late in arriving to the continent, governments across Africa took decisive actions to keep citizens safe and continue to implement global best practices and policies. While there are obvious capacity and execution shortfalls, there have also been several successful areas of practice.
Over the years, the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) has generated a wealth of knowledge through its research activities. And to this end devoted time, and resources to share this knowledge, particularly research findings that have strong practical policy implications with policy makers in the continent. This was at the twenty-third AERC Senior Policy Seminar that was held virtually on the theme: The Global COVID-19 Health Pandemic and Its Implications for the African Economies. The AERC convenes senior policy seminars to provide high level African policy makers the opportunity to come together to dialogue on the results of research conducted by AERC and its affiliates, exchange policy experiences and interact with the researchers in an atmosphere of peers. The themes of these seminars are selected based on topicality and contemporary interest to African policy making.